Imperfect IT: Automate SharePoint 2010 Farm Backups with Powershell

Found this useful. Had what seems to be a common problem, but not always obvious why your getting to problem - see this for more details.

# Location of spbrtoc.xml

$spbrtoc = "E:\Backups\spbrtoc.xml"

# Days of backup that will be remaining after backup cleanup.

$days = 3

# Import the Sharepoint backup report xml file

[xml]$sp = gc $spbrtoc

# Find the old backups in spbrtoc.xml

$old = $sp.SPBackupRestoreHistory.SPHistoryObject |

? { (

(

[datetime]::ParseExact($_.SPStartTime, "MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm:ss", [System.Globalization.CultureInfo]::InvariantCulture)

) -lt (get-date).adddays(-$days)

)

}

# get-date $_.SPStartTime) -lt (get-date) }

#$old | ? {write-host}

#write-host $old.SPBackupRestoreHistory.SPHistoryObject.SPStartTime

if ($old -eq $Null) { write-host "No reports of backups older than $days days found in spbrtoc.xml.`nspbrtoc.xml isn't changed and no files are removed.`n" ; break}

# Delete the old backups from the Sharepoint backup report xml file

$old | % { $sp.SPBackupRestoreHistory.RemoveChild($_) }

# Delete the physical folders in which the old backups were located

$old | % { Remove-Item $_.SPBackupDirectory -Recurse }

# Save the new Sharepoint backup report xml file

$sp.Save($spbrtoc)

Write-host "Backup(s) entries older than $days days are removed from spbrtoc.xml and harddisc."